Tag: journal

He asked me yesterday if ever read the Shahadatul Haq.

Truth be told, I don’t even remember the gist of the book, except that it expounds on the meaning of the Shahadah, and how it is required, how it is our duty to expound this meaning to others, to spread this Haq (truth), that is by pledging to it, we must exemplify it, act upon it, to see that Islam is before our eyes.  To re-enact, re-instate. To place it as the centre of our lives (and others). I remember A, and several others telling me how this ‘revelation’ and this sense of duty affect them so deeply. A asked if what I felt. What did I thought? Probably not the in the same degree as they did.

We talked about the country and how to mend society and its people, and the process of education. All too broadly applied a word. “It all sounds good in theory, but what about the practicality?”, he responds. Aaah, in the specifics he tries to draw me in. I said I do not know. You need people. In the end he comments on my ‘floating around doing nothing’ when I could’ve done more. Not playing the part, as it were. What was I waiting for?

Here I am, having just watched a six hour film about Freud the other day,  with Andre Gide’s The Immoralist book having just arrived for next semester’s subject,  Modernism,  having trite concerns about the indefinite future, pondering whether I should study the Enneagram theory or not after seeing the book this evening. I am wondering what to cook tomorrow.

Indeed I am hovering around aimlessly. I am without a cause.

So I told him that I am not ready.

Of course he and I share more similarities than we care to admit, except that we come from different schools of thought; where he would shudder at  the words ‘a more moderate Islam’.  After all, while he  was reading books from the likes of Hassan Al-Banna or the sirah and the tafsir,  I was dabbling with whatever seems to fancy me at the moment. It would take a lot of effort to be good, do good, but I shall, I shall, I shall. One has to first purify the heart after all, or at least have some initiative towards it, before one tries to do anything outside the scope the individual.

Otherwise one would be a hypocrite.

Tomorrow, my brother is getting engaged. It hadn’t really dawned on me if it was not for my cousin video-calling me on facebook (after so many months of ignoring her) this evening, telling that her mother has just flown from Kota Bharu to KL just to attend the ceremony. Maybe I am just too caught up in my own little world that I seem to not peg these little family events in my head. His birthday I noticed only after seeing the little pink birthday cake on facebook next to his name, and I sent a sort of a wish to him. F does a better job than me, at this. I seem to lack the propensity for birthdays, and instead of thinking of gifts for them, I think of Fernando Pessoa’s (or Alvaro de Campos’s, really) poems on the (in)significance of them.

I read that there are currently five hundred thousands of Japanese over a hundred years old, and the thought of it shudders me. If the age of retirement is sixty five, then what is one to do for the rest of the remaining years? Taking trains and reading at bookshops with their little bookcovers or visit the hundreds of temples and shrines in Kyoto, I suppose. Most of the local tourists there are very old.

Yesterday I had my English exam, and I think I did not do a good job at it. Instead of representing masculinity, I am representing the feminine. I should have practiced, knowing I have not answered any time-constrained 3-page-length essay for almost five years already. But things events disappointments happiness quickly fade as if they never happen, and we shall always feel the need to continually seek moments of happiness wherever it may be.

Of course, of course, I try to fill this void by not doing things I am supposed to do but to stall, to forego, and then forget them. I seek in the negative, and view the opposite as something unattainable, that I admire from a distance but can only do so much as to not approach them.

Do I dare disturb the universe, then?

I bake myself chocolate cake and feel happy. As I cleaned the kitchen, clearing the counter top, washing all the dishes in the sink, putting back the utensils back to their places, a surge of happiness rose within me. Earlier this morning I have felt the same too, while listening to Pheonix’s new album, Entertainment, cleaning my room, donning my prescription sunglasses. I feel empowered with these chores, and is never the happier with a lifetime of cleaning and cooking. After all, I am a woman. 

Around ten i rode my bicycle to A’s house, and opened her tub full of Malteasers, and we both walked to the university to play badminton. I did not want to take the bus, because I hated waiting and loved walking. A paid for me because I was nearly broke. Over here, I slammed the shuttlecock as much as I could before I was tired and tried talking to the woman I played with. She was from Sri Lanka, and she has a PhD. She must be exceptionally smart, and so I become a little disheartened by all the high achievers around me. I remind myself that everyone is good and everyone has their own provisions in the world, and so do I. I become happy again after walking and riding in the sun. I am listening to the Velvet Underground.

At home I try to sleep a little and read De Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity. Man feels powerful with all his achievements, the rational man, far above all living things, capable of all things – yet at the same time feel powerless in his insignificance in the universe, in the collective whole. This, she says, is ambiguity, and proceeds to Hegel, Sartre, Kierkegaard. I just nod my head a little and play Candy Crush.

 

She woke me up at precisely 7:20 in the morning and told me to get ready for the beach. beach. beech trees. I have not seen one. I hesitated for four minutes and said okay. Rough, rough sleep, inter-spaced with emoticons that convey more false emotions than real ones.

I love you.

I swear I am getting crazy.

After a ten minute ride we arrive and ran avoiding crusty dog shit along the beach behind the stadium. I saw ducks huddling together at the golf course. The sun had already rose, and I saw a black man running from the opposite direction. He bolts, and I feel his speed. Behind him is his girlfriend, or wife or sister, and she was puffing. I turn around and headed back. We were not really jogging, but made motions of it. I could catch up with her with just fast walking. I slowed down as I saw a bulldog shuffling through the dirt with its feet waiting to shit. His owner took out his dirty gloves. I did not stay to see the rest. I have seen many different animals defecate, camels, cows, cat, dogs, elephants, birds, fish. It is a nasty affair.

We walked to the beach. She jumped around in the sand, and I look at her rather nonchalantly and then at the lighthouse. I thought of Woolf. Then I look at the waves, and thought of Woolf again. I was nearer to the water because it was faster to walk. I avoided my shoes to get wet. I look at the sky and the sun is obscured by the cloud. It was a bleak sort of morning, where you feel a little ambivalent to its sadness and hopeful for the few times the sun would glimpse a little. I snap a picture for Instagram with her back on me. My album is full of pictures of the sea. But I never once swam in these oceans.

I then thought of Sylvia Plath’s poem Suicide of Egg Rock. Immediately a wave swept through my feet. I panicked but then felt at ease. I am one with the sea, and let it wash over me and my shoes.

She looked at me and I her and she said let’s get some coffee.

I never swam in these oceans.